“Talk about horseshoes!” grinned Stillman, when the first mad uproar had begun to lessen. “That’s the greatest ever. Looks as if the boys had a mighty good chance of cinching the game now.”
Manager Carson had emerged from the obscurity of the bench, and was on the coaching line again. Over by first base Captain Grant was capering about, a broad grin on his face.
“Going up, going up, going up!” he chanted to the air of a popular ditty. “Tied her nicely, but we won’t stop there. You know what to do, Kid. Beat it off that cushion, Joe!”
Kid Lewis hustled to the plate, and Welsh pranced away from the sack, ready to go down on the first slim chance. Unfortunately for the Blue Stockings, Donovan seemed unaffected by the two blazing errors which had permitted the locals to even up the tally. Instead of going to pieces, he tightened up wonderfully, holding Welsh at first, and fanning the batter with swiftness and dispatch.
As the Blue Stockings took the field for the opening of the ninth the fans were on tiptoe with excitement. If Lefty could hold the visitors down, there remained a chance for the home team to break the deadlock in the last half. Could he hold them?
Bush Aldrich was the first man up. The crowd remembered vividly what Bush had done to Pete Grist. Besides, the batters who followed were none of them slouches. As Locke walked briskly across the diamond the stands echoed with encouraging, beseeching shouts. Then a sudden, tense silence fell upon the great inclosure.
Calm and steady, Lefty stepped into the box. He paused a second, his eyes on the batter, and then handed up a high one. Aldrich started to strike, but checked himself, and a ball was called. Then the southpaw tried an outcurve. Bush still declined to bite.
“That’s right, Bush,” cried Murray. “Make him put ’em over. He’s got to.”
An elusive drop followed, which Aldrich barely missed. The next ball looked good, and he hit it. It was a line drive to right, which Rufe Hyland should have taken with ease, instead of muffing. Aldrich stretched himself, and reached the initial sack a second before the ball, quickly recovered and thrown by the discomfited fielder, spanked into Spider Grant’s mitt.
There was a groan from the fans, a spasm of joy from the Specter coachers. Rowdy Kenyon hurried to the plate. True to his record as a waiter, he prolonged the agony till the last moment, during which time Aldrich, upholding the reputation of his team for being “ghosts on the bases,” got down to second. Finally the visiting infielder hit a weak scratch between second and short, on which he reached first by great sprinting. A wave of tense uneasiness swept over the field.
Lefty’s eyes narrowed the least bit; his jaw seemed to tighten. In a few minutes, through no fault of his, the situation had changed from easy security to uncertain hazard. With none out, and a man on third, every bit of judgment and skill he possessed was needed to save the day. Driving Aldrich back with a threatening motion, he turned his attention to Callahan, and the impetuous Specter Irishman, after fouling twice, failed to touch a speedy shoot that clipped a corner.
A gasp of relief came from the stands, but lapsed swiftly into tense silence; for this was an admirable opportunity to try the squeeze play, and evidently from the way John Forbes held his bat he meant to do his part.
The infield crept into the diamond, balancing on their toes, alert and ready. Lefty pitched, and almost as soon as the ball left his hand he was on the jump. Forbes shortened his bat, and chopped one down the foul line straight into the flying pitcher’s glove on the first bound. Lefty Locke flashed it to third. But, for some reason, Aldrich had faltered, and now he dove back to the sack in time to save himself.
“Safe!” bawled the umpire, his flat hand extended.
The decision brought an avalanche of hoots and yells and taunting insults down upon his head, but he stuck to it; and when the fans settled back to take count their hearts sank within them. With the bases full and only one out, the situation was not exactly hopeful.
Lefty made short work of Donovan. The visiting pitcher did not touch the ball once, missing the last bender by more than a foot. As he strolled back to the bench, however, there were few sounds of rejoicing. The end of the batting list had been reached. The bases were still densely populated, and Dutch Schwartz, the mighty hitter whose average the year before had come close to equaling that of the amazing Wagner, was sauntering out with his war club.
Apparently he had no weaknesses with the stick, and his ability to outguess pitchers had made him a terror throughout the Big League. Cautious twirlers usually walked him when it was possible to do so at a dangerous time without forcing a run; but, even had he wished to do it, such a course was not open to Lefty now.
Whatever anxiety the southpaw might have been feeling, he faced the batter without a tremor. The first ball was a trifle close, and Schwartz let it pass without suffering a penalty. The next, delivered with a long side swing, came over at an odd angle. The batter fouled it, evening up the score.
Lefty then tried an underhanded delivery that was productive of another foul. Then the big Specter center fielder refused to nibble at a coaxer, which evened things once more.
“Two and two,” muttered Stillman on the reporters’ bench. “I wonder if he’ll do it? By Jove! He’s got to!”
With anxious, admiring eyes he watched his friend’s cool, deliberate, yet not in the least dragging, work. Lefty’s perfect control enabled him to bend the ball over the rubber from any angle.
Foul after foul resulted with a nerve-racking regularity which brought the fans to the edges of their seats in tense, breathless suspense.
Three balls were called, but the struggle continued. With each swing of the southpaw’s long arm, Schwartz swung his bat, and the ball caromed off in a foul. One could almost have heard a pin drop in the vast inclosure. Even the raucous voices of the coachers had been momentarily stilled.
The end came at last, suddenly. When it seemed almost certain that Locke had exhausted every trick at his command, the pitcher, with his toe on one end of the slab, stepped straight out to one side with the other foot, and brought his arm over. The ball left his fingers at the moment when his hand seemed to be extended at full reach above his head. Apparently it was not a curve he threw, but from his extended fingers the sphere shot downward on a slant, to cross the outside corner of the plate.
Schwartz struck at it with a sharp, vicious snap—and missed!